jaydeejay

WARNINGS FOR THIS SHOW:
physical/mental abuse, sexual abuse, pedophilia

Now onto the review!

I recently watched all of My Stubborn, and suffice to say: I didn't enjoy it. Now, I'm a PWP fic reader; I love a story with more porn than, well, actually story in it. However, I feel like that doesn't really translate well in live action format. My Stubborn was reaaaaally banking on the sex to carry the show. There was very little plot that was actually interesting. The show was 12-13 episodes with each episode being around 50mins each, so having little to no substance save for sex can only go so far.

I bring My Stubborn up because I feel like Bed Friend did what My Stubborn couldn't. I bring it up because both shows are fairly similar in terms of them being about adults in an office space trying to balance work and romance (and sex). Hell, MS is listed as a Recommendation under this show.

Now, this show isn't perfect. Apparently it's gotten a lot of bad rap, but I recommend giving it a try yourself and see how you like it.

--STORY--

The story gets heavy VERY quickly. And in a way, I'm glad for it.

I was warned by a friend who knows I hate seeing depictions of kids being mistreated about the TWs. Right off the bat in episode one, we're given info about Uea: his mother would lock him up in the bathroom, yell at him, hit him with objects like metal hangers- the works. We also learn that he was being sexually abused by his step father and that said shitty parent still makes advances at him all these years later. Uea has a boyfriend who cheats on him, and when caught, the ex stalks him and damn near r-pes him.

Like I said, very heavy stuff.

Now, in general, I don't expect BLs/yaoi to handle heavy subject matter like this well enough. I find that most of the time, it's what I've always called Angst Porn: a very shallow, poorly executed way of adding angst/drama to a story that otherwise doesn't need it. Usually with these types of stories, they go waaaay far beyond what they need and they end up adding all sorts of random tragic events to the character. In the end, it always ends up feeling pretty offensive.

In my opinion, certain subject matter should be handled delicately. I don't believe BF handled things perfectly, but I do believe they handled things better than I expected.

Uea's habit of self sabotaging felt real to me. I have a friend who had gone through similar events as Uea and he too had moments of pushing people away in what made sense to him as protecting them but also himself. Uea continuously doing so in the first half of the show broke my heart at times. The scene in the latter half when Krist invited him to his office and despite it being pretty damn obvious what Krist would do, Uea going anyway and explaining it as "well, what else could I have done?" killed me. He's so used to being treated like shit by all these people that he felt like he had no other choice than to listen to someone above him.

This brings me to my next point, which is that I LOVED that Uea had people who supported him despite his own beliefs. Jade checking up on him, asking him if he needed someone to go with him places, and just in general keeping an eye out warmed my heart. Sometimes in these types of stories, the love interest is the only one who's like this. But outside of King, Uea had other folks who caught on to how fucked up circumstances were when they were made privy. Like I said, it wasn't perfect, but it was pretty refreshing to see.

Lets move onto King's character and Uea's relationship with him.
The transition from general distrust to friends-with-benefits to dating to making things official had a very nice flow. The anxiety Uea had about taking things further and placing boundaries made a lot of sense. The scene that really got me liking King's character and the writing in general was when they were getting intimate but King accidentally triggered Uea with a specific touch. At this point, King is not at all aware of Uea's past, but he immediately clocks that he had triggered him and later on promises not to perform that specific act again.

Overall, King's willingness to wait on Uea and protect him when he can was nice to see. It was doubly nice seeing Uea openly place boundaries and King respect them. Sure he has moments when he teases Uea (like when Uea said no touching at all at one point), but Uea seemed in control with allowing him to tease him.

Like I mentioned before, I almost never trust BLs to handle stuff like this well. So seeing stuff like boundaries be respected was buck wild.

There was a moment when King fumbled very hard, but I felt like, once again, it made sense. Basically, it's the aforementioned Krist scene where after Uea gets attacked but managed to escape, King comes across him, At this point in the story, Uea and King have massive tension between them where they're not being vulnerable or truthful enough with each other. This leads to King incorrectly assuming that Uea went to Krist because he actually wanted something out of him.

I can see this moment making a lot of viewers side eye the fuck out of King. Even I did, to be very honest. But despite that, his reaction made sense. He didn't know what we knew, and things were so messy that he displaced his anger. I'm not excusing him, but what I'm trying to point out was that, if anything, the writing was good here.

Also, once again this is bare minimum, but Uea's boss suggesting he see a psychiatrist after Krist was exposed and fired somewhat blew my mind. Especially when later on, Uea finally feels safe enough to tell King about his step dad and mentions that he takes meds not to help him feel stable.
I'm not too familiar with Thailand's feelings towards taking mental health seriously, but if it's anything like Japan and South Korea, then this scene is pretty impressive

Now later on, the story was get a little Happily Ever After- if that makes sense. As in, the writers have aaaaall this angsty stuff to somehow wrap up in a neat little bow wherein at the end, the main characters can live the rest of their lives worry free. Sometimes, I don't like this because it can feel rushed and dismissive of what the character(s) had gone through. But because of all the sensitive subject matters and the fact that we do slowly see Uea heal over time, I didn't quite mind it here.

Random thought: I thought Jade's character was very cute. I found myself wishing he was in a romance! And it seems like the other show (middleman something?) is going to be focused on him? I'll definitely check it out!

--ACTING--
Something like 90% of the reason why I decided to finally give the show a try was because of King's actor. I come from a culture rife with colorism, and I've definitely noticed it in these BLs where they're very quick to only choose light skin actors. While King's actor isn't the darkest Thai person out there, it was very refreshing to see someone with some color as a main. i was honestly afraid that he'd be a terrible character who ends up also abusing Uea in some way (cough My Stubborn character cough), but no he's actually fairly sweet most of the time.
I HATED that there were times when they didn't color balance some scenes so he did end up looking lighter than he is.

But overall, the acting was fairly average. They had some really solid moments, especially with Uea's mom and in the flashback scenes. Very sad moments but memorable in how the acting was. I'd also say that Uea's actor was overall pretty solid.

However, there were times when I wished a scene between King and Uea was more emotional. It was strange because they'd have some pretty solid moments- but then there'd be other moments when they weren't emoting as much as I'd expect. I almost wanna blame this on the directing.

The actress playing Uea's little sister could've done a better job. If anything, she was cute.

Both of their actors look great together. I would love to see them in something else.

--SUMMARY--
I say give this show a chance, but heed the trigger warnings! Apparenlty a lot of people didn't like it, but I thought it was fine, Not the worse in handling heavy subject matter.